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Written by Lia Goldman
Founded after World War II, the United Nations was envisioned as a forum that facilitates international cooperation and conflict resolution. American ideals strongly influenced the new system of global governance as the United States was at a moral highpoint and made up more than half of the world's economy. Today, member states increasingly disagree over the values, rights, and power distribution in the UN. Another challenge is the rise of China and the end of U.S. hegemony, which is creating a new geopolitical system with an unequal balance of power among governments that hold very different values and goals. And China is not the only country whose leaders reject the liberal framework of the UN. These tensions intensify and harm cooperation when the stakes are high, often rendering the Security Council useless when it is needed most, such as during the civil war in Syria. Along with the UN’s central mission of fostering international cooperation, its governance is also supposed to facilitate conflict prevention and intervention in wars when civilians need to be protected. UN peacekeeping operations suffer because the increasingly demanding nature of peacekeeping complicates operational success. Traditional UN peacekeeping only intervened as a neutral force between two warring states once they had agreed to a ceasefire (Bratt, 1996). The focus shifted from peacekeeping between different states to interventions in civil wars. This has made peacekeeping missions much more complex and militarized than in their early days of monitoring, observation, and interposition. Today, peacekeepers faced a multitude of tasks that were not envisaged when the peacekeeping doctrine was initially designed. Missions mandates range from high-level diplomacy and mediation to complex field operations in active conflicts with ideological extremists who operate across borders, and armed militias and criminal syndicates who are not interested in peace agreements (Nossel, 2021). Managing these diverse tasks is nearly impossible under the current financial and political constraints. Military peacekeeping involves complex trade-offs that are inherent to decision-making in wartime. In war, moral principles about the permissibility of killing and instrumental military imperatives often directly contradict each other. It is difficult for UN peacekeeping to deal with these moral, legal and instrumental dilemmas as it derives its legitimacy as an organization, at least in part, from its normative coherence. In addition to this, peacekeeping failures have seriously hurt the legitimacy of the UN’s protection regime. (Not only in normative terms but also with legitimacy derived from its practical value to facilitate the resolution of armed conflict and to effectively protect civilians). Peacekeeping troops were infected with cholera and spread the disease when deployed to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake. This was exacerbated by poor sanitation on the peacekeeping base. The UN refused to accept responsibility and wealthier member states refused to set up a fund to help cholera victims. Sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and Haiti is another catastrophe that seriously puts into question the legitimacy of peacekeeping. This inadmissible conduct is not a result of the UN in itself, but of low standards and insufficient preparation of the national armed forces that provide troops for UN peacekeeping operations. The UN has taken steps and built a stronger administrative infrastructure to train and vet troops and hold them accountable for violations, but contributing states have not all followed through. These failures have seriously hurt the legitimacy of the peacekeeping regime and fuelled demands for a higher threshold for intervention. Certain member states demand much higher levels of violence, and death to authorize military operations. Emerging Strategies to Prevent and Respond to Conflict As states are more reluctant to commit the resources to lead military interventions to intervene in wars and protect civilians, other measures are becoming more frequent to end armed conflicts and prevent violence. States increasingly pursue less-costly nonmilitary strategies, such as economic and diplomatic sanctions (Crossley, 2020). The most appropriate measures to end conflicts, and prevent political violence vary given that crises tend to be very different, but overall the wider use of nonmilitary measures that are less resource-intensive should facilitate the consolidation of states’ domestic and international responsibilities. It can also alleviate the concern that peacekeeping facilitates liberal interventions with neocolonialist aspirations. To have an effective global governance system that can step in to respond to wars, there also needs to be greater consensus on the legitimacy of peacekeeping and further clarification on what type of peace the system seeks to promote.
What kind of peace does the UN seek to build or maintain? What does ‘peace’ look like? At a minimum, it is seen as the absence of violent conflict. This is frequently called ‘negative peace’ because this definition uses a minimal threshold to characterize a context as peaceful (Galtung, 1969). In contrast to this stands the interpretation of peace as ‘positive peace’ which also requires the absence of structural violence. Such a vision of peace allows the consolidation of the UN’s peacekeeping and development goals. Finally, military peacekeeping must remain an available option to respond to situations in which all else has failed. If there is no other way to restore peace, or if populations face grave threats, the UN must be willing and able to intervene for their protection. Many peacekeeping shortcomings are grounded in the failure of member states to uphold the UN’s founding norms, rather than the principles of peacekeeping itself. The underlying cause is not the institution, but interest-based realpolitik - the failures of great powers to agree to action that prioritizes the common good. The result is deadlock and inaction in the face of armed conflict and extreme political violence. Global governance can only be as good as the acts of those who govern. With energetic diplomacy and a renewed will to subordinate self-interested power pursuits, the UN can explore alternative conflict response measures and seek ways to increase consensus and legitimacy to fulfill its mission of countering global security threats and ensuring security and peace.
References
Bratt, D., 1996. Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations. International Peacekeeping, 3(4), pp.64-81. Crossley, N., 2020. Consistency, Protection, Responsibility. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 26(3), pp.473–499. Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. Nossel, S., 2021. The World Still Needs the UN. Anchoring the World. Washington: Council on Foreign Relations, pp.33-50.
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